


Underneath this Shroud

by Ladycat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander buries his face there, unable to really breathe from their shared warmth, her fingers in his hair, her other arm loosely curling over his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underneath this Shroud

Water plinks against the glass. It’s not comfortable, too hard, too flat, too cold against his skin. Moving is impossible right now, though, so he stays with his face pressed up hard against the window, the skin around his temple bunching uncomfortably, watching a dirty gray sky yield to dirty gray buildings and dirty gray people. It’s a change from what he’s been used to.

His eye aches.

The bus slows, hissing as gears shift, breaks engage and far too many pounds of rusted metal as it goes against all the laws of physics in order to stop. Xander lets the momentum carry him, rocking so that his nose bumps into the window, shocks of pain joining the conga line already dancing under his skin. It’s fitting, in a way.

Around him, people stand up, sit down, talk to each other or themselves. It should be loud, even boisterous, if only from complaints about the wetness that leaks everywhere. It isn’t. Each person feels distant, muffled by the gray rain clouds that don’t get left behind when the doors close. 

His skin crawls as he waits. The last time he was in this much wet, each drop was warmed to near boiling before ever touching his skin.

This is a cold rain. Dull and dreary, like the mottled, clouded sky he can’t stop watching.

The bus driver calls something unintelligible. The accent is different, sharp when it should be rough, slurred when it should be full. He feels like he’s being jabbered at, words meaningless noise that bombards the shells he’s wrapped himself in.

Four more stops.

The bus starts again, lurching forward before settling back, vibrations joining each twisted, broken thread of his nerves to spin them into new configurations. Each is more painful than the last. A woman jostles him, apologizing absently, while a young girl with a piercing in her nose watches him with wide, unblinking eyes. Instinct makes him want to meet her gaze, to try and see—no.

Not here. Not ever again, if he has his way.

Besides. He knows she isn’t, and will never be.

His eye feels gritty as he closes it, dust and sand trapped where no cold, empty rain could ever rinse it free. He’s gotten used to the feeling. Maybe. Maybe he’s just gotten used to always feeling it, like the dull ache that rattles his brain, never ceasing, never easing.

He tells people he ignores it, now, that he barely remembers it’s still there. That he’s okay.

He’s lying.

When he opens his eye again, the little girl is picking her nose. The unpierced side.

Xander makes a face, because certain things he knows better than to fight, smiling when she giggles and turns to an equally be-metaled mother. Apparently enough jewelry to make a metal detector scream in agony is better then an eye-patch; he’s glared at suspiciously.

He doesn’t bother digging up a placating expression, just shrugs and turns back to the yellow flashes of lights disappearing behind them. They never stop, just keep going, endless stretching out around him.

He feels trapped in the middle. Lost in gloom and gray, hurricane-sick skies constantly above his head.

When his stop arrives he almost misses it, muttering curses under his breath as he fights his way to the front of the bus, be-satcheled and -suitcased, an oddity among all the day-trippers around him. A man near the front gives him a queer look when Xander finally pushes himself and his belongings free. He’s been listening. “Hey—you from Elizabeth?”

His companion, darker than the night sky Xander hasn’t seen in weeks, snorts and spits out words full of consonants.

“I’ve been there,” Xander says, in the same language. “Have a nice day.”

It’s effective if only because the first man bursts out laughing, the second round-eyed in surprise. It’s an unusual dialect. Xander hesitates on the last step, almost getting a door in his rear-end because listening to that rise and fall, the carefree joy of _laughter_ , letting each boom crest over him...

The hydraulic hiss of the door closing feels final.

A man with white gloves and a huge umbrella hustles up to him, covering them both. It doesn’t do much; the rain is more like mist, rising up, crowding through unprotected sides instead of letting gravity direct its motions.

“I would’ve picked you up, you know.”

Xander doesn’t bother smiling. “I know.”

“Well, come on.” There’s no exasperation in the words, although there should be. Just a quiet kind of sadness. It grates. “This way.”

He follows, clutching the handle of a suitcase that’s turning to mud. Questions are tossed at him: how was the flight? Is security still an almighty horror? Is he hungry? He gives a few replies but mostly stays quiet. It’s easier, and his answers aren’t really necessary, anyway. He pretends to be busy studying the new architecture, all the renovations and changes that have been made, but he doesn’t really see them. He doesn’t really see anything at all except the watery haze he can’t leave outside.

“Xander.”

He stops, body curled underneath the weight of his satchel and more. He says nothing as she approaches, doesn’t shiver when her hands cup his shoulders. When she leans forward for a kiss, he turns his face away.

Time wavers.

Willows eyes are huge, dark pools of hurt as she backs away, arms wrapped around her middle like she has to hug _something_. “Oh,” she says.

Xander reshoulders his belongings and starts walking. He knows the way, now. No one tries to stop him, which is a surprise—

—so it isn’t at all a surprise when he opens the door, light pouring out to highlight perfect blonde hair and pale, familiar skin.

The laugh that fills his throat is bitter, acid wash that burns the way his eye still sometimes does. He keeps it back, though. Busies himself with dropping his belongings next to the dresser, shrugging out of his jacket and scrubbing through hair that still smells like smoke and ash. Dust bites the pads of his fingers.

“She didn’t have a choice, Xander.”

He sits at the desk to undo his boots. They’re a pain when he’s flying, but he’s learned what has value and what is merely status. He refuses to wear anything else, now, no matter how occasionally frustrating they might be. Occasionally is acceptable. “I know who made what choices.”

Her head twitches, a lock of hair shifting behind her shoulder. It still wisps into her face, but she doesn’t bother removing that. Her mouth is fuller than he remembers. “But you’ll take it out on Willow?”

He wants to demand how the hell she can make assumptions like that, but he knows she’s already seen the evidence. He carried it with him through the door and it rides his shoulders even now. “No. I’m just not going to thank her for it.”

“She blames herself.”

“That’s useless.”

Years ago, the word would’ve been ‘stupid’. This way is crueler, for all its accuracy. Sighing, Xander removes the patch and goes still. Waiting. There’ll be a knock at the door, or one of the three phones between them will ring, a shout rising up from the salle, wherever that’s been moved to. Something. Anything.

Buffy lifts her arms.

Her stomach smells the same, salt skin dropped with milk and honey, a core of strength like ozone underneath. Xander buries his face there, unable to really breathe from their shared warmth, her fingers in his hair, her other arm loosely curling over his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“I’m not.” It’s not a lie. Every person born is dying and that goes doubly true for Slayers. For them, it’s not _when_ they’ll die, but how. “She did what she was supposed to.”

“You loved her.”

“I _love_ her,” Xander corrects.

Buffy leans to one side, letting her legs stretch out over a comforter that is many shades of blue. Her hair, always golden like the sun he misses, tangles around him like a shroud. The gray dissipates against her living warmth, leaving nothing but the dry, firm touch of her hands on his skin. “You should talk to Giles, later. He’ll understand.”

Xander shakes his face against her, shirt riding up at his insistent motions. She doesn’t bother tugging it back down. Her belly button is pierced, Xander finds, kissing the stone he knows is blood red. “You understand.”

“Yes.”

 _He got you back_ , Xander says with his fingers, tight and probably painful; she says nothing in complaint and he knows she never will. _He always gets you back. He’s never lost like you have. Not when it means winning._

“We’re going to have a service,” Buffy says. Shayra’s name will be added next to the others. One was Andrew’s. One was Dawn’s. Now one is his. 

All of them are Buffy’s. It doesn’t matter that it’s Giles who has the ivory inscribed and who officiates each ceremony: all of them, however distant, however peripherally connected they might be, are Buffy’s.

There’s no ring to rid himself of, this time, just a tattoo on his ankle he doesn’t want to remove, anyway. He’s learned not to put himself in transient things. “This is her service.”

Buffy curls herself around him, giving him her air. “I know,” she says. Then: “I’m glad you came back,” like she didn’t think he would, this time.

He almost didn’t. Standing on the edge of a pyre, staring through heat-haze to something only his memories can give the form of—

She catches the tear on her fingers.

“You have things,” he says, because this isn’t something he knows how to allow himself, not anymore. Not _here_. He’s given salt to a desert, already. That has to be enough.

“No,” she says, her voice low and warm, so far from the bubblegum snap he’d first loved, the one that echoes up from his memories. He doesn’t miss it. “Well, yes, I have things. I have Xander-shaped things.”

Rain drums against the walls, a steady beat his heart catches. He can breathe a little easier, now, and he thinks he might even be able to handle Willow’s too-palpable guilt and Giles’ awkward attempts at comfort. It’s uncomfortable—it _will be_ uncomfortable, but that, too, is home. “I miss country music.”

“So we’ll get you some.”


End file.
